my island

it is not writer’s block

I don’t believe in writer’s block. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because, no matter how badly a story is going, I can usually write something, even if it’s just stream-of-consciousness nonsense. The problem, of course, is that I have specific things that I do want to write.

I have three novels in rewrites. Three. All of them roughly finished, but in need of considerable work to make them saleable. I’ve got to finish something, got to polish it, got to get it in good enough shape to send it off to an agent. Tempus fugit. I am ever more aware of the march of time, the lateral movement of my career (such as it is), and the fact that this year I will be 30.

There’s nothing wrong with being 30. I’m not really worried about it, except that I had always sort of thought that by then, I’d have a book published. And I don’t. Not yet. It’s partly an issue of time– not having enough of it to really throw myself into work because of that pesky day job. It’s partly an issue of capability. I just don’t know how to fix some of the things I’m working on, and at this point, I don’t have the luxury of putting them aside indefinitely. I have a deadline.

But everything seems to have ground to a halt. When I sit down to try to work on something, there is only a void where ideas should be. Nothing comes. And I’m aware that the more I worry about it, the more pressure I put on myself and the less likely I am to come up with anything. But time is flying while I’m flailing about. I can’t work dead-end jobs for the rest of my life. I can’t relegate writing to a hobby, something I do in my spare time, because it’s just too damn important. So what do I do?